Colin Renfrew

Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, FBA, FSA, Hon FSA Scot (25 July 1937 – 24 November 2024) was a British archaeologist, paleolinguist and Conservative peer noted for his work on radiocarbon dating, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, neuroarchaeology, and the prevention of looting at archaeological sites.

Renfrew was educated at St Albans School, Hertfordshire (where one of the houses is named after him) and from 1956 to 1958 did National Service in the Royal Air Force.

He then went up to St John's College, Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences then Archaeology and Anthropology, graduating in 1962.

In 1965, he completed his PhD thesis Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of the Cyclades and their external relations; in the same year he married Jane M. Ewbank.

His "Anatolian hypothesis" posited that this group lived 2,000 years before the Kurgans, in Anatolia, later diffusing to Greece, then Italy, Sicily, Corsica, the Mediterranean coast of France, Spain, and Portugal.

He developed the Anatolian hypothesis, which argues that Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European languages, originated approximately 9,000 years ago in Anatolia and moved with the spread of farming throughout the Mediterranean and into central and northern Europe.

Lord Renfrew looking at artefacts including Roman gold coins